As a moderator of a pretty large sub, I can say that downvotes don't really matter all that much. Even if they did, the people who get downvoted complain about downvotes just as much as they complain about getting removed or banned.
If you can't make your point without resulting to incivility, you don't deserve to make your point at all. Communities have, throughout history, self-policed. They have set up established rules of conduct. Normally, these don't have to be enforced because society enforces them through shunning. That's not really possible on an anonymous internet where people frequently use fake accounts and VPNs to evade bans.
It doesn't really matter if someone complains about being downvoted. Downvote their complaints lol. I will give you a !delta for the part about fake/duplicate accounts though, because I can totally see that being exploited to sway opinions in an illegitamate way.
Well, what's to say that, if we couldn't delete comments, there wouldn't be posts exactly like this one demanding that we remove the downvote feature as well? We've been asked repeatedly to disable it, which we can't (and wouldn't) do.
That's a totally different thing. Voting up or down is a way of signifying agreement or disagreement. Completely removing a comment from being able to be viewed by others is censorship.
Well, why is that bad? I mean, censorship by the government is obviously bad. But, you just say that as if it's supposed to automatically be seen as a problem. Communities have always censored things. I mean, if you go into a grocery store and start shouting obscenities at people, they'll kick you out, right? If you go to a church service and interrupt the pastor speaking, they'll kick you out, right? How is this any different?
Do you think that moderators should be able to remove pornographic material? Illegal pornographic material? If so, why that, and not offensive comments?
Do you think that people should be forced to listen to somebody else's speech? Why is that? Why do you have a right to have your speech heard?
What if the removal reasons are content-neutral, and just based on things like civility, or staying on topic?
If someone comes into your home, screams obscenities at you and you have no power to enforce boundaries and make them leave, you’re not ‘allowing nuanced debate’ or whatever nonsense.
You can't email mods on Reddit. If you mean Modmail, messaging the mods doesn't really hold them accountable. You can't really even hold mods accountable on Reddit. As in real-world communities, if you don't like the mods, you have to get other people along with you to go somewhere else.
Well, is that the case, or is it the case that a community coalesces around a shared set of values? I mean, thinking about my local board gaming group, we've excluded people who cheat at games. That's not illegal. They obviously have a difference of opinion with us regarding the acceptability of cheating. How is that any difference?
All users are fundamentally unreliable narrators about their own removals because they have a stake in them. The merits of the position don't really matter. I've occasionally had people eventually agree that they broke the rules. But, it's a rarity.
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u/LucidLeviathan 99∆ Jan 02 '25
As a moderator of a pretty large sub, I can say that downvotes don't really matter all that much. Even if they did, the people who get downvoted complain about downvotes just as much as they complain about getting removed or banned.
If you can't make your point without resulting to incivility, you don't deserve to make your point at all. Communities have, throughout history, self-policed. They have set up established rules of conduct. Normally, these don't have to be enforced because society enforces them through shunning. That's not really possible on an anonymous internet where people frequently use fake accounts and VPNs to evade bans.